Questions, questions, questions :-)

It was a beautiful day and the little ones were sitting in the kitchen while Uncle Ukki prepared lunch.

They were chit-chatting about all kind of stuff and admiring the new wall paper Uncle Ukki received from a gnome from the other side of ( this) world.

Uncle Ukki finally decided to put up a painting he had for a long time and he was in a very good mood.

Barby was reading quietly as usual when suddenly she asked: "Uncle Ukki, I've read the Gnome book from A to Z but there is something I cannot find . . . . ."

"What is it Barby dear ?" Uncle Ukki asks her.

"Well, I'm trying to find out why the sky is blue ! I did check your Great Book of Knowledge but there are missing pages and where the missing pages should be there was this very old photograph."

"Yes yes look Uncle Ukki ! This fell out of your book!"
 Arthur held up a very odd looking picture.

"Oh dear. . . ." Uncle Ukki replied and he paused for a minute.
He had a frown on his face as if he was thinking very hard.

"Children, the man on the photo and the man on the painting are one and the same man.

He is the Great King Ollamh and he is one of the few Gnomes who is responsible for feeding a creature called Skugga."

The little ones started talking all at once: who is Skugga ! what does he feed the Skugga ! what does that has anything to do with the blue sky!  why are the pages missing?!!!

Uncle Ukki raised his voice and told them to be quite.

"CHILDREN ! Our lunch is ready so first : lets eat ! "

 While we eat you take a close look at the painting of King Ollamh, it's a magical painting and if we call him with our thoughts he will hear us and come soon and tell you himself what 

his task is in this world."

Uncle Ukki has said enough, the little ones were quite as a mouse :-) and while enjoying their lunch they looked up at the painting and tried very hard to think about this Great King.

 To be continued. . . . .

"how to " make the panel-mouse

You will need : piece of wool for the head, piece of wool for the leg, felting needle, eyes,  little piece of skin-coloured felt, eyes ( 4 mm. ) thread ( white) pipe-cleaner, scissors, piece of cardboard

 You roll the piece of wool for the head in a egg-shape, one side more pointier.

Poke until it's firm-ish.

Poke the tiny piece of skin-coloured wool on the pointy side ( nose)

Like that :-)

Forgot to mention : super tiny piece of orange wool

Poke it in like this to form the mouth and nose-stripe

Until it looks like this . . . . 

Put pins in the head to determine the position of the eyes

Check from all sides if they are symmetrical

Put the thread trough the eye

Stick in the needle in the place where the eye will be and come out with the needle in the back of the head

Pull a bit and knot the string on the back of the head ( you can needle felt a bit of wool over it to hide the knots.

Work the other eye the same way

Cut ears and needle felt a bit of fluff on

Poke the ear on the head

Squeeze it a bit together to make it a bit folded

Work the other ear the same way ( check if they are symmetrical) and I put a bit of blusher in the ear, looks good :-)

Cut a piece of the skin-coloured felt for the leg and cut fingers

Glue the pipe-cleaner on it

And wrap a piece of the white wool, make sure the fingers bend a bit otherwise it looks funny.

You can stop now and wrap the little one in a blankie ( if you don't have eyes you can sew a little stripe for the eyes and it will look as he is asleep )

Get the piece of cardboard and draw a half circle around the head, like this

Cut it out and colour the inside black ( I used a marker) , I left a little white on the right side for the effect but you have to stick the finished mouse on something where the light comes from his right side ( for the proper effect)

You cut the leg so it's as short as this .

Tadaaaa meet Hank !

( by the way, the light comes from the wrong side, the effect is better if it comes from the other side)

So, I hope you all like this and I would say: go go go ! make lots of them !

Helen

                       

Little sillyness

I found this little mouse today, this was really my first needle felt attempt.

I stumbled upon Natasha Fadeeva ( http://www.fadeeva.com/ ) 4 years ago and was totally in awe of all of her critters. The mice and the cats were my favourite.

I've never heard about needle felting before and had no idea what it was all about.

Her cats are mostly knitted and I thought, well I can give that a try. I emailed Natasha and she was so very sweet to mail me a pattern of the knitted cat. I bought some fluffy wool and started to knit.

Mmmmm, didn't work. I can knit a sweater as long as the pattern consists of squares, square front, square back, square sleeves sewn together and voila: a "sweater".

So after endless research on needle felting on the internet I bought needles ( in a shop where they sold supplies for making dreadlocks) and I started my first mouse. I copied Natasha of course and this mouse was my first :

It had a terrible body and I put it away in a box where I save my "attempts".

I think after about 8-9 months I tried again and made this Pinky:

Well, to get back at the mouse, I found it and I thought her little head was cute, so I cut of her body, glued it on a piece of black cardboard and glued the whole thing on the skirting ( I'm not sure how it's called in English, vertical boarding ? )

Silly isn't it :-)